Ryan Schmelz live from DC with the latest on DOGE cuts

Episode Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:00):
Joining us.

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now. Ryan Smells, our Fox correspondent in DC, on what's
happening with DOGE. Now, they're not only going in to
try and find fraud money and wasteful spending, but congressional
approved and appropriated funds are now being yanked back. What's
going on? Ryan? Good morning?

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Right? Hey, good morning JK. Yeah, this is this is
actually making the cuts officials so they can actually apply
the savings to any type of deficit reduction national debt numbers. Now,
so this has been something they've been pushing for. Republicans
in Congress have for some time. Now. They finally got
the White House to send it over and now they've
been able to vote on it.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Well, most funds that you know that they are cutting,
thinking about this a little bit more, we're probably appropriated
and approved to be spending. I'm curious the ones that
are trying to claw back on now are they recently
appropriated or were they old administration appropriated?

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, I mean, well it's kind of confusing because you know,
like you have the spending levels that were approved during
the Biden administration and with you know, the the Republican House, Democrats, Senate,
and then you know, back in I believe it was March.
They pretty much extended those Biden era spending levels, with
a couple of changes here, you know, cuts to They

(01:13):
added some military spending, made some cuts here, but for
the most part, it was just a clean extension of
the Biden era budget policies. So, you know, essentially they've
been wanting to call back some of the spending for
some time. A Republican's been saying to the White House,
send us, send us this a recision package. Then we
can actually make some of these Doze cuts permanent and

(01:33):
also avoid any legal challenges. So if this nine point
four billion gets approved by the Senate, those cuts become
official and there's really not much you can do about it.
After that. Was it the.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Doge team at Minus Elon that put together the suggestion
and thoughts to do this to Congress?

Speaker 2 (01:51):
It was the opposite management and budget that other luncher
send it to Capitol Hill.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Was there any vote? And what I was just going
to say, was there any Congressional pushback on the request?

Speaker 2 (02:02):
There was? I mean, well, you didn't have any. All
Democrats voted against it. There were about six Republicans at
first who voted no. Then eventually you had two of
them flipped their vote. They got it across the finish line.
Most of the concerns, I think it's a lot of
some of them don't like the idea of cutting PBS.
Others don't like the idea of you know, a certain
programs that that were kind of targeted with this. When

(02:23):
it comes to the USAA de portion, there's a program
called pep Far which is actually a Republican program that
was started under George Bush, which you know goes to
addressing the HIV and AIDS epidemic across the globe. You know,
one of the members who was concerned about it said
that he talked to leadership found out that, you know

(02:44):
a lot of the funding cuts that they're going to
be pursuing here aren't related to the medicine side of things.
It's more for like administrative stuff, it looks like. So
that was a little that made it a little bit easier
for him to get the s.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Well, devil's in the details, right, you see that all
they're cutting the AIDS program in research, No we're not.
We're trimming the staff that works there. Why the spins
on some of these things, So the reality sometimes is
not the headline, of course, shock, Are there so any
further big major cuts coming through that we can't expect
and may be surprised to hear about.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yeah, when I was kind of told and I think,
you know, when this thing almost staled yesterday, there were
some people who were just like, you know, there are
some other less divisive things they could have pursued that
probably would have made this easier to pass, and kind
of some of those and we've heard members floats and
animal testing is a big one. I'd watch for that.
You know, that's actually been a bipartisan effort well, from

(03:39):
from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress at times. And
you know, that's one of those things that actually goes
and the White House has clawed back in the Department
of Defense and IHS called back, and it hadn't really
gotten much pushback from Democrats or really anybody, at least publicly.
So I think that's probably one they might pursue in
the future that might be a little less controversial too.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
All right, Very good, Ryan Smells, Thank you, buddy for
a update on what's happening with the DOGE cuts in
DC this morning.